Pronunciation of "bred" and "bread"

Is there any difference between the pronunciation of "bred" and "bread"?

At least here in southeastern Wisconsin, nope. I pronounce them both a /brEd/ --> [br\E:d_}].

I'm from California, and I pronounce them the same.

Just a question,

In most dialects of English ''bred'' and ''bread'' are pronounced the same i.e. /brEd/ or /bred/. But, for some Australians ''bred'' and ''bread'' are distinguished as /bred/ and /bre:d/ as the result of a phonemic split. ''bread'' in those accents rhymes with ''aired'', which they pronounce /e:d/.

I'd recommend that Non-native speakers learning English should pronounce the words the same way, as most people do.

I think the vast majority of native English speakers don't distinguish "bred' and "bread." Zarafa, where in California are you from?

...erm....the same...yeah..almost exactly the same...er...wel,....yeah..exactly the same...aye..the same!

I think there might be a slight split in mine, I'm from OZ. I should sound record this one for you.

Smith, you've been to Wikipedia's Australian English talk page. I mentioned this there.

Yes, I pronounce them differently just as Smith's X-SAMPA transcription denotes. I don't know why this is.

I agree, though, there'd be little point foisting such a detail onto ESL students: there are too many more important things to teach.

However, if ever I have need to teach ESL students the word "bread" I'm not going to (mis)pronounce it as "bred".

<<However, if ever I have need to teach ESL students the word "bread" I'm not going to (mis)pronounce it as "bred".>>

Yeah, I think ESL teachers should generally use their natural, native pronunciations, and if it's a salient issue or noteworthy difference from the arbitrary "standard," then they could at least tell the students the difference. For instance, I would not start making a distinction between "cot" and "caught" (especially because phonemic [O] is not native to my dialect so I'd be likely to screw it up anyway) but I would tell my students that some dialects do distinguish them.

San Francisco, Kirk.

This is the best approach in my opinion too, Kirk. However, as for "bread" vs. "bred", chances are ESL students would not be likely to pick up the difference. (Keep in mind the level at which an ESL teacher would be introducing such vocab. as "bread".) I'd hesitate to call this BREAD-BRED split salient issue or noteworthy for ESL students (unless they were quite advanced) unlike the COT-CAUGHT merger which affects many words & many dialects.

<<This is the best approach in my opinion too, Kirk. However, as for "bread" vs. "bred", chances are ESL students would not be likely to pick up the difference. (Keep in mind the level at which an ESL teacher would be introducing such vocab. as "bread".) I'd hesitate to call this BREAD-BRED split salient issue or noteworthy for ESL students (unless they were quite advanced) unlike the COT-CAUGHT merger which affects many words & many dialects.>>

Good point. It seems a somewhat subtle difference even for native speakers to pick out and isn't common in a whole lot of dialects so it might be fine to ignore telling students about it (especially at lower levels where there are far more important universal distinctions to bring up), unless someone brought it up.

You can find my mp3 at:

http://www.geocities.com/fkosovel/bred-bread.mp3

It's very strange: when I say the words individually they don't sound alike, but in sentences they do. Please tell me what you think.

I think your voice is very nice, Frances.

Perhaps individual words sound different from words in sentence because they're plunged in a unique phonic milieu that yields specific influence. And individually-pronounced words may be realised with unsual (and unconscious) focus or attention.

Both "bread" and "bred" are pronounced the same. It's another example of the "unphoneticness" of English.

Most foreigners when learing English would expect "bread" to rhyme with "bead."